


I can fix the wounds but not your heart

by Laramie



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Fix-It, Other, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5177645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laramie/pseuds/Laramie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A suicide attempt has consequences. Depression doesn't disappear in an afternoon. Thomas is still unhappy and what he really needs just now is a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I can fix the wounds but not your heart

**Author's Note:**

> When Downton finished, I turned off the TV, went upstairs, sat on my bed and wrote this in its entirety. I guess you could say it's everything I want to say to Thomas, put in Jimmy's mouth. So yes, it’s Thommy in a close relationship; feel free to read it as friendship or pre-slash, whichever pleases you more.

Thomas didn't know how Jimmy had come to be standing in his bedroom. He didn't know who had contacted him or by what means or how they had known where he was. He didn't know how Jimmy had arrived so soon. He didn't know why Jimmy had come at all. In the end, it didn't matter. He was there.

Jimmy stared at him from across the room, his back pressed against the opposite wall. His face was tight and Thomas wanted to hold him and tell him everything would be alright, but he couldn't. For so many reasons. Jimmy had not spoken a word since he had entered the attic bedroom, even through Thomas's handful of visitors. Even when Master George had come to see Thomas, the contour of Jimmy's lips had not edged even the slightest iota into a smile.

When Mary and George had left, barely acknowledging the silent spectre of Jimmy's presence in the corner and closing the door with a quiet _click_ that fell into the air only to intensify the silence; only then did Jimmy speak.

"All better now then," he said flatly, his deep voice like the sweetest harmony against Thomas's ills.

"Of course," Thomas replied, managing to smile. It felt fake on his face, as though his lips might shatter from the strain. His wrists throbbed. _I didn't cut deep enough,_ he thought sadly. _I've failed you, Edward._ "As I said to Lady Mary, it was all my own doing. I see that now."

Pressed against the wallpaper, Jimmy's hands fidgeted. "That's just more hate," he said. "That's not better."

Thomas shrugged as best he could, having little energy to move.

"What happened?" Jimmy pleaded. "You used to have this... this shield. Whatever people said to you, you'd just bounce right back at them. And not only the bad stuff, either. You can be so kind." Jimmy paused, his beautiful blue eyes flickering over the covered shapes of Thomas's form under the covers until Thomas wanted to roll over and hide in the quilts from his too-knowing expression. "You look like a little boy," Jimmy resumed. "Like someone's taken your shield away and instead of fighting them you're just stabbing your _self_ in the hope that it'll make them go away."

It was as though the words got lost somewhere in the great expanse between Jimmy's post by the wall and Thomas in his bed, reaching his ears only as a fuzzy echo, like a radio that was not quite tuned. "It's just me," Thomas murmured, speaking to the white sheet covering his legs instead of Jimmy. "I'm rotten right down to the core. If you're looking for something good in me, you'll be a long time waiting."

"Who knows you like I do?" Jimmy demanded, beginning to sound agitated for the first time. "No one, that's who. I _know_ you like I know myself and I know there's far more good in you than there is in me. And I've seen how people treat you; never the benefit of the doubt, oh no, not for Thomas Barrow, he must be being nasty rather than just making a _sodding joke_."

Thomas was enraptured by the display of passion from Jimmy, Jimmy's hands clenched into fists now. He had rarely heard Jimmy say so many words all together in the whole of their friendship.

"Yeah, you're a bastard sometimes and God knows you know how to twist the knife but they're just as bad to you, sometimes." A few steadying breaths rushed in and out between Jimmy's lips. When he spoke again, his voice was calmer, gentler, like the starry night sky left after a firecracker. "You're not the monster they say you are and it's not your fault it's come to this, it's theirs. An' I'd strangle every last one of them for it if I didn't need to be here for you."

Thomas sat with the words and the silence until the weight of Jimmy's gaze was too much to bear. "I wish you'd come over here," he said hoarsely.

Timidity drew in Jimmy's shoulders, bowing his head before Thomas. "You scare me, lookin' like that," he confessed quietly. "I've spent far too much time looking at you in bed, prayin' you'd get better."

Thomas did not give voice to the thought that in his ideal world, Jimmy and he would see each other in bed every night.

"I don't want to hurt you."

"I won't break," Thomas pointed out.

"Now that's more like you," Jimmy murmured, crossing the dividing space between them at last and coming close enough to touch - and then he did touch, ghosting his fingers against the back of Thomas's hand. The contact brought the faintest kiss of warmth to Thomas's grave-cold body.

Thomas gazed up at Jimmy like he was an angel sent to deliver his salvation. "Am I dreamin' you?" Thomas asked, not too concerned by the answer. He didn't think he was dreaming, but he wanted to hear Jimmy say it.

Jimmy's face crumpled. "It's really me. I'm really here. I'm sorry I took so long." He folded his hand properly around Thomas's. "You need to learn to trust yourself again; you need to believe you're not the twisted man they make you out to be -"

"But I am," Thomas said, without inflection. He did not know whether he believed it, but everybody else did, and that hurt just as much. "I am twisted by nature into something foul -"

"You're _not bloody foul_ ," Jimmy growled fiercely. He gestured wildly with his free hand as he spoke, one stiff finger berating Thomas's unseen attackers. "You've forgotten that there's nothing wrong with _you_ , it's the whole bloody… SODDING world that treats a man such as you like he's not worth anything when really he's worth - you're worth so much, Mr Barrow - Thomas - at least to me. And you need to get out of here. Look what these people have done to you since I've been gone." He clutched Thomas's hand tighter, until Thomas could almost feel the bones grinding together. "You need to find people who'll love you, in whatever way that is, instead of letting this lot drag you down."

Thomas dropped his head back against the pillow and closed his eyes to avoid the painfully earnest look in Jimmy's eyes. It might be easy for Jimmy to find people to love him; it had never been so for Thomas. Leaving Downton would only mean finding strangers to despise him instead of his current acquaintances. "Jimmy -" He broke off abruptly; he didn't have the right...

"What is it?" Jimmy probed.

"It doesn't matter. I can't ask you for that."

"You can ask me for anything," Jimmy corrected him. "If it will make you feel better."

"It doesn't matter," Thomas said again. "I was only thinking how long it's been since someone held me."

The moment he finished speaking, Jimmy was toeing off his shoes and lifting the bedcovers to climb in next to Thomas, his body warm and solid and _real_ as he pressed up close to Thomas.

Thomas found himself surrounded by a pair of strong arms, by the sharp but wholesome smell of Jimmy's skin. Thomas closed his eyes and let himself be lulled by Jimmy's breathing. The simple expansion and contraction of Jimmy's chest against him delighted him on some deep level that was greater than sexual - it was the satisfaction of the deepest, primal need for a warm, safe body against his own.

For a brief moment, Thomas felt his world shrink to the scant space between his own face and Jimmy's chest, and let himself imagine, for the smallest of seconds, that he could find a better world outside when he resurfaced.

 


End file.
